JeffKatieEmma.com

We finally had our final inspection and we PASSED!!  No more inspections and we can move in.  Over the next couple weeks we’ll be moving some furniture in and actually using the cabin.  It took nearly 1.5 years of weekends (off and on) but we pulled it off.  The best part is that now that we’ve done this once, we now have enough knowledge to never want to do it again.  :)

I uploaded 106 pictures of the cabin that cover the majority of the progress that we have made on it over the last 1.5 years.  As most of you know, the work was done on the weekends (not all of them but a bunch of them) by mostly Darren and I.  Ben came out a few times and also helped a bunch.  (Thanks Ben!!)

Anyway, I wanted to put a set of pictures up on the web in case someone was interested in seeing the chronological progress.  You can see them at:

http://www.jeffkatieemma.com/construction

Things are moving along.  Our hope is to be done with the cabin by the time spring starts.  We just have a few more loose ends to tie up and then we should be moving in.  Here are some pictures of the latest progress:

http://www.jeffkatieemma.com/almostdone

Happy Valentine’s Day!!

Just when I thought I couldn’t possibly do any more work on the cabin, Emma came to the rescue.  She showed up with all her gear on and was ready to do some heavy construction.  Emma received a "Lil Helper" tool set for Christmas from Sarah and Dan and was excited to put them to use at the cabin.  We took a few pictures and a cute video as she pounded away on nails.  I think she had a great time "helping" and we kept all the gear up at the cabin so that it’s there for her next time.

Katie finished a quilt for Dan awhile back.  Dan had a ton of racing T-shirts that he’s received over the years when he was involved in racing.  Rather than throw them out, they decided a T-shirt quilt would be a great way to keep the memories without having a pile of shirts sitting around.  Katie chipped away at it during the last few months of the year and finished it in early December.  There is a picture of it below.  This is the second T-shirt quilt that Katie has made.  The first one was with a bunch of T-shirts that I had.  It has turned out to be our favorite cabin comforter.  :)

I’d say that work continues on the cabin, but you probably already knew that.  There are just a few more things to do before we call for the final inspection.  We are really looking forward to getting the place signed off so that we can finally rest when we go up there!

Not much else going on here.  Judy put up a New Years Eve picture from our evening at Mom’s.  We had a nice time and we all stayed up later than we have in quite awhile.  Emma was dying to go to bed at about 9:00 but she refused to go to bed unless the other kids also went to bed.  Since the other kids wanted nothing to do with bed, she ended up staying up until midnight.  Amazing.  That’s the latest she’s ever been up in her short life.

Anyway, Happy New Year.  We are all back at school and work now.  It’s already feeling like we are back to the grind…….

We made some great progress on the cabin before New Years.  The kitchen is pretty much put together now.  All the appliances are installed and working, the sink is done etc.  The only things left to do in there are to finish building a box above the microwave (to close in the vent pipe) and then do some trim work on the bottoms of the cabinets.

We also finished the deck railing and finished up the shower in the bathroom.

We are getting closer and closer to calling for a final inspection.  To say we can’t wait would be a major understatement!!

We hope you had a Happy New Year and have a great 2008!  We all spent the evening over at mom’s last night since it was the anniversary of dad passing away and New Years at the same time.  New Years Eve has forever changed for us, that’s for sure.  Judy’s family and our family all spent the night and the kids stayed up until midnight.  (That’s a first)

Here’s a link to the latest cabin pictures: http://www.jeffkatieemma.com/progress

We’ve been working on the kitchen at the cabin recently.  Our friend Ben came up and helped us set all the cabinets a couple weekends ago.  We have been trying to decide on whether to add a couple more cabinets next to the refrigerator to make a small island, but I think we decided not to for now.  It’s something that we could relatively easy once the final inspection is complete.  Right now we are trying to focus all the things needed to pass the final inspection.  The list is getting smaller, although we keep realizing there are additional things that have to be done prior to the inspection so it isn’t shrinking as fast as we’d like.

While Ben was out there, we also insulated the rest of the garage and then sheet rocked most of the walls.  As you can imagine, we are getting very tired of working on the place.  We are very ready to have it finished so that we can just go out there and enjoy it.  It’s been over a year since we started so you can imagine why we are ready to be done.

Besides working on the cabin, we’ve also finished up all of our Christmas shopping and are ready for all of our family get togethers.  Emma has been very interested in the calendar lately.  To say she has been anticipating Christmas is an understatement.  Her Christmas list pretty much looks like a promotional item for "High School Musical".  I think she’s just starting to lose her infatuation with the movie, but she’s definitely hoping for some High School Musical themed presents.  Since she isn’t a regular follower of our web site, I can tell you that she won’t be disappointed.

We are all planning on heading over to Mom’s this evening to spend Christmas eve together with Brian, Marcia, Aunt Jean and everyone else.  It should be a great time.  It will be fun to see all the kids excited about the evening.

Judy and Scott have created their own blog/web site.  You can see it at: http://theearlefamily.spaces.live.com/

I have also linked it up under the "links" area of our web site on the left.

We hope you have a MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR!  (You too Dad.  We love you and miss you dearly!)

I know it seems like all we ever post about is the cabin progress, but I guess that’s because we are spending so much time working on it these days.  Last weekend we put the flooring in the bathroom, installed the toilet, vanity and granite countertop.  We also installed the interior doors and wrapped all the windows with wood trim.  On top of that, we installed the water heater and finished putting in the deck rail, although we still need to install the cedar 2X6 top on it.  Needless to say, it was a busy weekend.

We are hoping to have the kitchen cabinets delivered on Friday and might hang all of those this weekend.  Once that is done, we just need to wait for the appliances and get countertops installed and then we should be close to getting our final inspection.  We’ll get the flooring installed soon after that.

Besides that, not too much else is going on.  We had Thanksgiving at our house with Jeff’s family (We had Katie’s family Thanksgiving earlier in the month).  There was plenty of turkey and ham and all the food was delicious.

Darren was out at the lake last weekend helping work on the cabin.  We took time out to watch the Apple cup.  Unfortunately we didn’t have Fox Sports Northwest at mom’s cabin so we went next door to Steve and Theresa’s to watch the game.  They were actually at the game but Pam and Andrea were home.  We took soup and cake over and had a great time with them.  Darren was especially happy with the outcome of the game.  Since Katie and I are Wildcats, I can’t say I was too worried about who won.  I have plenty of family and friends that went to both schools, although if I had to pick, I’d go with the Husky’s just because my sister and brother in law are alumni!  :)

Anyway, that’s it for an update.  To see some pictures of the cabin, click here:

http://www.jeffkatieemma.com/cabintrim

It was another pretty busy weekend for us.  On Saturday morning, Katie dropped Emma off at Grandma Joan’s and then came out to the cabin (where I had been since Friday morning).  Emma spent the day with Grandma, Aunt Jean, Bryson, Jaden and the rest of the Earle gang.  She then spent the night at Judy’s and went back over to Grandma’s on Sunday morning where she spent about half the day with Grandma and Aunt Jean until we came back to pick her up.

Katie and I worked hard on the cabin on Saturday and got the majority of the painting completed inside.  What we didn’t finish on Saturday, we completed on Sunday morning.  We also did a lot of clean up and installed electrical outlets and things like that.  The place is coming along nicely.  Next up is flooring in the kitchen and bathroom and then we’ll be ready to hang cabinets.  The new appliances will be delivered on December 21st so we hope to be ready for them by then.

On Saturday night, Katie and I took advantage of our “alone” time and went out to the Little Creek Casino for dinner.  The food was great!  Once we were finished with dinner, we decided to gamble $20 on Blackjack.  While it was a fun ride, the end result was the casino made an easy $20 off of us.  Oh well, it was fun.  By the time we got back to the cabin, it was about 7:45.  We both fell asleep by 9:00.  We must be getting old because it turns out that the kids stayed up later than we did (at Judy’s).  I’m sure that having worked all day played a part in how tired we were too though.

On Sunday afternoon, Katie headed back, ahead of me, while I went over to help move a Christmas tree in to the community park.  We transplanted it and will be having a Christmas tree lighting on December 2nd.  It should be a great time!!

Here are a couple pictures from the weekend:

There just doe n’t seem to be enough hours in the day.  We have all been very busy lately.  Since we haven’t posted for ahwhile, here are a few of the highlights from the past month.

We went to Remlinger farms with Jessica, Nathan, Ryan, Mom, and Aunt Jean.  Everyone had a great time!  I’ve posted a couple pictures from the event below.  Emma always love going there.  They’ve done a great job of creating a magical place for kids there!

A few weeks ago we took the train down to Portland to visit friends.  It was the first time that we’ve all gone on the train together and it was a lot of fun.  We were all surprised at how fast we got there!  We’ll definitely do that again!

Emma has been sick over the last week.  She had a very high fever (103.8).  We got her to the doctor quickly and they diagnosed an ear infection.  She is on antibiotics for 10 days to clear that up.  It’s really kind of amazing how happy she can be when she’s sick.  She definitely didn’t get that trait from her dad!

Last weekend, Polly and Vic came to town to visit and we had an early Thanksgiving at our house.  Sarah, Dan, Alex and Sydney also came over and we had a “Brown” thanksgiving.  Lots of food and it was all delicious.  Polly and Vic headed back to New Orleans a couple days later.  They will be going to England in early December to spend time with the relatives there.  Polly will go earlier and Vic will meet her there for a couple weeks in December.

We have been working on the cabin.  I can’t wait until we can’t say that anymore.  The sheetrock was completed and the mud/tape/texture was just completed last week.  We spent this weekend priming and painting.  Katie and I spent all day on Saturday painting while Emma played with Grandma at the other cabin.  We were able to prime the entire interior, paint the ceiling white once the primer dried, and today we painted the bathroom and kitchen.  There is still a little more painting to be done in both rooms but that will go quick.  We also wired in all the smoke alarms and installed all the trim for the can lights.  The ceiling is complete!!!

Next week we plan on going up to complete all the painting and will also work on installing outlets and light switches.  That should go relatively quickly.

On the way back from the cabin today we stopped at Lowes and looked around.  By the time we had left, we had purchased all the appliances for the kitchen, a granite countertop for the bathroom and a few other miscellaneous items.  I also can’t wait until we are done spending money.  It’s amazing how expensive everything is!

Well, my fingers are getting sore so I think it’s time to stop typing.  Below are a few pictures from our month of October/early November:

Here are some recent pictures of Mom’s house.  Emma has been sick so we had to keep her home from school.  I decided to take her over to Grandma’s for awhile today so we weren’t couped up for the entire day.  I took a few photos while I was there: